? Gateway Trail Ride Sunday | Main | Stone Soup ?
July 10, 2005
The Gateway
Today I rode the entire Gateway trail with 9 other people. What a beautiful trail! It's almost all flat and is about 18-19 miles long. It's kind of difficult finding the start of the trail but once you're on it, it's awesome.
Really, the trail is nice, but that's not really the story that's worth telling. The story is really in the interesting, nice people who went on the ride. 2 of the guys are living at the Dorothy Day Center in St. Paul. One guy lives in his van with his wife and two live in a tent in some wooded area a little ways away from Downtown St. Paul. I'm bringing up their living conditions for a couple of reasons. It's not so I can class them as a subgroup of society but so I can tell you about a few dynamics of the ride:
One of the planned stops was DQ. One of the guys told me that he wasn't going to come because everyone was planning on stopping at DQ and he didn't have any money, but then he decided to come anyway. I'm glad he did. He really enjoyed the ride!
Another guy was borrowing a bike because his old Schwinn Caliente (A really heavy 10-speed, I used to have one) was broken. He was telling me how he uses it to get around and how useful it's been. Over the last few months I've seen a lot of the guys who live at the Dorothy Day Center. Many of them have 'earned' a bicycle at the Bike Depot by doing cleanup, fixing bikes, sorting parts, or other odd jobs. Some of them are regular customers for used parts now because they commute all over by bike. Tomorrow he's going to 'trade in' his old bike for one I have in my garage.
When we got to the park at the end of the trail, I could see a difference in people by what they ate. A couple people broke out their trail mix or nutrition bars and drank some energy drink to rehydrate. But these guys broke out a bag of day-old rolls, bread and muffins from the thrift store, which they put in the middle of the table for everyone to share. Nutrition for them is really about what they can afford to buy at the time or what someone shares with them.
Another interesting thing was that all 5 of the 'homeless' guys smoked cigarettes. And along the ride they made a few 'smoke break' stops. 3 of them even smoked while riding.
For 3 guys, this was their very first ever group ride and they definately said they were coming back for next month's ride.
One thing we all had in common though was a bike. In fact 8 of us use a bike as our primary means of transportation. But the one guy who lives with his wife in their van drove that to the bike shop and unloaded his bike from his living room. He usually drives his van everywhere, then uses the bike for short rides from his base of operations.
On the way there I rode with the heavy smokers so that no-one was left behind. I was reasonably sure on the way back that they'd all make it back ok so I rode with three people who were going at a faster pace. The Gateway trail runs really close to Lake Phalen and one of them had the idea to ride over and take a quick swim in the lake. Wow, what a great idea. We went for it. We found the beach and took everything out of our shorts pockets and had one person watch the bikes while three of us went for a swim. It was awesome. Then I came back out of the water and let the other guy go for a swim. It was very refreshing! After that we hopped on Arcade and rode down to the Swede Hollow trail back to downtown. We pulled up and the rest of the group was already there, sitting on the steps chatting and chilling out. They had been there for about 20 minutes when we arrived. Not bad for a major detour. By the way, we were almost completely dry by the time we got back. They didn't know we went for a swim and said, "I thought you guys were ahead of us!" Haha, we had to tell them we went swimming.
I am really glad I went along on this ride. These are a great group of people.
Next month, I think on the 23 of August they are planning a camping-overnighter-bike trip. That will be an experience I don't want to miss.
I have a lot more to talk about, but unfortunately I'm tired from spending all day in the sun and am headed to bed now. I'm thankful for my shower, good meal, house with AC and bed tonight. I'm also thankful I have a full-time job. I'm also thankful for the new friends I'm making who share their bread at the table.
Posted by carl1236 at July 10, 2005 09:54 PM | Love your Neighbor